1 6 The Wilderness Hunter. 



and stately of all animals of the deer kind, and its antlers 

 are marvels of symmetrical grandeur. 



The woodland caribou is inferior to the wapiti both in 

 size and symmetry. The tips of the many branches of 

 its long, irregular antlers are slightly palmated. Its range 

 is the same as that of the moose, save that it does not go 

 so far southward. Its hoofs are long and round ; even 

 larger than the long, oval hoofs of the moose, and much 

 larger than those of the wapiti. The tracks of all three 

 can be told apart at a glance, and cannot be mistaken for the 

 footprints of other game. Wapiti tracks, however, look 

 much like those of yearling and two-year-old cattle, unless 

 the ground is steep or muddy, in which case the marks of 

 the false hoofs appear, the joints of wapiti being more 

 flexible than those of domestic stock. 



The whitetail deer is now, as it always has been, the 

 best known and most abundant of American big game, 

 and though its numbers have been greatly thinned it is 

 still found in almost every State of the Union. The com- 

 mon blacktail or mule deer, which has likewise been sadly 

 thinned in numbers, though once extraordinarily abun- 

 dant, extends from the great plains to the Pacific ; but is 

 supplanted on the Puget Sound coast by the Columbian 

 blacktail. The delicate, heart-shaped footprints of all 

 three are nearly indistinguishable ; when the animal is 

 running the hoof points are of course separated. The 

 track of the antelope is more oval, growing squarer with 

 age. Mountain sheep leave footmarks of a squarer shape, 

 the points of the hoof making little indentations in the 

 soil, well apart, even when the animal is only walking ; and 



